Furniture was not present in such quantities as in later centuries, chairs especially being fairly rare. Tables were long and rectangular, laid on trestles, with benches for seating. At the head of the table, for the principal person of the household, was a straight-backed chair. Chairs, generally, were the subject of a certain etiquette, being reserved for the most important people, and they were often surmounted by canopies. Retainers had to stand; less important members of the household were sometimes supplied with stools. Folding chairs, like the old Roman curule chair, appeared in the 14th century. Although a few chairs had seats and arms stuffed with rushes, it was more common to drape them with textiles and put cushions on the seats. Buffets, often superbly carved, were used as a stand for silver and for serving food.
Medieval bedsteads, with highly carved posts and canopies, were often of great size, and they were customarily occupied by several persons—as well as the favourite dogs, who slept on top. The Great Bed of Ware in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, is reputed to have held six couples in comfort.
Goldsmiths’ work was often decorated with enamel, and bronze was similarly treated. The usual technique was the champlevé type, in which the metal is engraved or carved and the spaces then are filled with powdered coloured glass, subsequently fused by firing. At Limoges and in the Rhineland a wide range of objects were executed: quite large works, such as tombs, as well as smaller pieces, such as chasses and reliquaries. Lighting appliances were made of bronze or wrought iron. Those for suspension were usually intended for oil lamps, and standing candlesticks and candelabra were provided with spikes onto which the candle was forced (pricket candle sticks).
Very little decorative pottery was made, although the colourful dishes and vases of Moorish Spain are an exception. Tiles were extensively employed for both walls and floors in houses of the better class, and there was a proverb in Spain to the effect that a poor man lived in a house without tiles. The technique of manufacture was often quite complex and included inlaying with clay of a different colour. The vogue for tiles was imported from Islām by way of Moorish Spain. Chinese porcelain was known in western Europe by the late 14th century but was, of course, extremely rare; indeed, specimens were often mounted in silver in the same way as the semiprecious hard stones such as amethysts, garnets, and peridots.
The Gothic style lingered in England and northern Europe much longer than it did in the south, and many more examples of it escaped destructive wars than on the Continent. The panelled room characteristic of the style and the period has survived more or less intact in England, where panelling with traces of paint can still be found.
Gothic ornament sometimes makes use of motifs similar to those of classical interiors, such as the acanthus leaf and the rosette, but the treatment is very different. The Gothic craftsman liked to abstract certain features of his model and emphasize them in a stylized manner, as in the heraldic eagle, especially as it is used on the reverse of dishes from Moorish Spain and in coats of arms like that of the Holy Roman emperor. It no longer bears any resemblance to the naturally depicted Roman eagle but is stylized, with a geometrically drawn tail. Similarly, the lion has its open mouth, tongue, mane, tail, and claws treated in the same way. Compass work is a marked feature of much Gothic ornament. The cross, for instance, is never a plain cross but is ornamented with geometric motifs; it may represent a reemergence of some old Celtic motifs, which were often based on compass work. Much Gothic ornament is floral and foliate, freely and naturally treated in some cases but stylized in others. Like interiors, paintings were in bright colours. Some of the ornamental motifs to be found in objects intended for interior furnishing are architectural, like the crocket (projections in foliate form), the panelling of chair backs, and the doors of buffets. Islāmic countries
The Arab conquest in the 7th century ad and, in the 8th century, Muslim expansion into India and Spain had profound influence on the decorative arts throughout the known world, especially as most of the long-distance trading routes passed through Arab lands. The skills of the conquerors fused with the traditional skills of their subject peoples, and because Islām forbade the portrayal of human or animal form, whether for religious or artistic purposes, and encouraged the incorporation of Qurʾānic texts into design, religion played a considerable and direct part in the development of design. As with nearly every other society, the finest and most lasting buildings were of a religious nature, and, unfortunately, few domestic dwellings have survived.
Architectural quality and form were subordinated to intricate and richly coloured surface decoration. Perhaps the finest results were achieved in Persia, where a high level of technical ability already existed in combination with great lyrical sensitivity. There the principal decorative features were the ceramic tiles and tile mosaics that encrusted floors, walls, roofs, and domes both inside and out. The mosques of Isfahan, Meshed, and Tabriz, ranging in date from the 13th to the early 17th centuries, demonstrate a completely satisfactory use of colour in architecture. Lustred tiles with a combination of floral and geometric design date from the 10th and 11th centuries, and naturalistic flowers frequently give a gardenlike effect to the tile decoration. Iris, rose, carnation, tulip, pomegranate, pine, and date are depicted, always with delicately interlacing stems, and contained within plain or patterned borders. Blues of all shades, from turquoise to a deep ultramarine, are characteristic.
Patterns for tilework and patterns for the Persian carpets are frequently interchangeable. Carpet designers soon managed to circumvent the Muslim ban on the use of animal forms: lions, deer, leopards, ornamental birds, and, occasionally, even mounted huntsmen were depicted, the figures always judiciously placed to give the maximum decorative effect. Artistic achievement reached its peak under Shah Abbās I (ad 1588–1629), but well before this time Persian carpets, silks, and pottery were known and valued among Europeans, as they still are in the 20th century.
In Egypt and Sicily one of the results of Muslim domination was the introduction of a high degree of ornamentation on wall surfaces, once again principally by means of vividly coloured ceramic tiles. The patterns are more solid than those of Persia, filling up the areas between the containing arabesques and with less open backgrounds. Moorish design in Spain shows even more complex interlacing geometrical framework, which is filled in with formalized leaves, flowers, or calligraphic inscriptions. Ceilings and the upper parts of walls were modelled in flat relief with coloured and gilded arabesques, while the lower wall areas were tiled. The decoration was partly hand chiselled and partly molded. Such decorations may be seen in the Alhambra, built at Granada in the 15th century, a pleasure palace whose arcaded courts and halls are embellished with stuccoed decoration in honeycombed ceilings, stalactite vaults and capitals, tiers of horseshoe-shaped or stalactite-fringed arches, and pierced or latticed windows.
In the mosques of Turkey, walls were veneered with marble, and ceramic tiling was introduced only in small areas. Colours, too, are less exuberant in the large mosques, where a sense of space rather than of overwhelming decoration is preeminent. Domestic buildings were largely of wood, looking inward to secluded courtyards and gardens, but with elaborately latticed windows projecting at upper-floor level over the street. As in most other Islāmic countries, the wealthy furnished their houses with velvet and silk hangings, couches, and innumerable cushions.